Read signal evaluation method, information recording and reading method, and information recording and reading apparatus

A read signal evaluating means for ensuring compatibility in an optical phase multilevel recording and reading system is provided. In addition, a decoding means not large in circuit scale is provided. An optical phase is modulated based on user data, and phase information thus obtained is recorded in a recording medium. Then, the phase information recorded in the recording medium is optically read, and is converted into an electric signal. The signal is subjected to adaptive equalization and to partial response most-likely decoding. A shift in a time axis direction from a target wave of a predetermined pattern is detected from the read phase information and a statistical average is calculated. Meanwhile, a value of the phase read from the predetermined pattern is extracted from the read phase information and a statistical average is calculated.